Touches: Dark and Light
by Loise
Summary: Draco and Narcissa after fifth year going back home to Malfoy Manor, without Lucius. Draco faces a difficult choice.


Touches: **Dark** and _Light_

The car was dimly lit. The tinted windows were shadowing the car in various shades of gray. Creating a cesspool of darkness, which Draco and Narcissa Malfoy sat silently. Facing away from each other, isolated in their worlds.

In the gloom, they seat, blonde shining even in the feeble light. Skin ethereal, pale and otherworldly. They are both clad in a dense black material that swathes their body in sorrow and malaise. They radiate with an intense force. A glow from within that sustains them. This aura surrounds them, binding them closer.

Draco Malfoy, well trained enough not to sigh, simply turns his head away and stares out the window as the landscape rushes past. Pureblood they may be and Muggle haters to the boot, but his Mother refused to floo, and so by extension Draco didn't. As he was not of age he could not apparated and they did not wish to aggravate authorities, so they traveled by car.

It was intensely boring. A period of time that he was alone and had to make small talk with his parents. But… his father wasn't here today.

Then his Mother moved. It was slight, but she has moved so that she was facing him. Moving along the leather seat, her velvet and silk robes swishing softly as they rustled, she placed a cool hand on his own.

They sat there silently, without a sound, as the car's engine's hummed along the twisting road. Sitting in the dim, darkness. Finally she began to speak to him.

"I see our judgment wasn't entirely correct." Her cool, detached voice was devoid of emotion but Draco stiffened all the same and pulled away a fraction.

Closing his eyes against the onslaught of emotions, he heard his voice replying from a long distance away, "No, Mother." Her hand slid up his arm and then down. Her skin was both cold and warm at the same time. Slumping slightly, his shoulders bending under the pressure he had been forced to withstand. "No, Mother. We never expected this to happen to Father, we never expected him to leave."

She remained quite, but he felt her eyes upon him. Her worry and fear. What was going to happen to them now?

"Draco? Know this?" Her hand slid from his hand to his elbow and she gasped at the fabric at the joint. Feeling the pull he turned to her, eyes inquisitive

Her eyes were intense, piercing into his own. "Draco. Be yourself, and never," here her grip tightened around his arm and he felt pain as her nails sank into his flesh. "Never submit and bow. You are a Malfoy." As if a great weight had been taken off her, she sighed and leaned forward, turning her face away from Draco.

"Mother?" Draco asked nervously, unsure what to do. He looked at the hunched up, sagging shoulder of his mother.

"Draco," she choked out, her voice was thick with some constrained emotion. "Please promise me this."

She was crying, Draco realized. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he positioned her body so that it faced his own. Her eyes stared at him hopefully, full of unshed tears, one silvery tract on her porcelain skin.

With a sudden motion, Draco embraced his mother. Hugging her tightly, they exchanged some silent tears. They did not sob dramatically, or weep hysterically. They were too proud. But pent up emotions were finally being released. Draco relished in his mother's arms again. The warm, hopeful touch of another human being. It felt so good after last term's… events at the Ministry. His cold isolation at Hogwarts.

"I promise, Mother, I promise."

She pulled away and looked him in the face. A tender quavery smile lit up her streaked face making her look beautiful. "Thank you Draco darling. For being so brave… I love you." Her eyes dropped. Her arms leaving his body, they were withdrawn.

She slipped away as the car came to a halt. Opening the car door, by herself, she gave him one last look. "Draco… I believe you can do this. I believe in you darling." Leaning forward she kissed his forehead softly and Draco savoured the simple contact, closing his eyes.

But then all once he was alone, left in the cold darkness. Isolated from his peers and the rest of society. All by myself.

His mother left out the door, leaving it open behind her. The sun shining through, blinded Draco momentarily, causing coloured spots to form in front of his eyes. Blinking them away, he relished once more in the refreshing darkness, before exiting the safe, know dark for the blinding light.

Following his mother, Draco paused and looked back. With one strong sweeping gesture, closed the door behind him and the shadow it was casting.

He then began to stride away.


End file.
